


Unforgiven

by Saetha



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguments, Blood and Gore, Haytham Kenway Lives, Haytham is hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Shay is angry, idk more a character study than anything else rly, really bad innuendo, they argue and make up and argue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22961851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saetha/pseuds/Saetha
Summary: “It was the only way, Shay,” Haytham called after him from his place on the bed, eyes grey and unforgiving. “The only way to keep you safe.”Shay grabbed his coat, belts and weapons without turning around.“It was the way of a coward.”*Haytham survives the encounter with his son, but only just. Shay has words with him once he is well on his road to recovery.
Relationships: Shay Cormac/Haytham Kenway
Comments: 7
Kudos: 96





	Unforgiven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LivaWilborg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LivaWilborg/gifts), [Pure_dumb_magpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pure_dumb_magpie/gifts).



> Apologies to anyone who's been waiting for more fics from me - real life is currently kicking me in the ass HARDCORE. It took me two months just to write these 3k words, ugh. This one is set in the same AU as Tokens of Buried Past, although you don't have to have read that one. It's a scene I referred to in the former fic - of the big argument Shay & Haytham had shortly after Shay saved him. 
> 
> A thousand thanks to Liva for our wonderful Shaytham & general conversations that keep inspiring me (I will reply soon! I promise!) and to Pure_Of_Heart_Dumb_Of_Ass for your incredibly wonderful comments on Hellhounds - reading them was what actually gave me the push to finally finish this fic yesterday! 
> 
> **IMPORTANT! The first few paragraphs, in italics, contain some pretty visceral gore and body horror. Feel free to skip them if this isn't your cup of tea - it's just one of Shay's nightmares.**

_All the beauty in your face  
And all the anger separates us  
Smile when you're not afraid to die  
But I'm afraid  
With each goodbye_  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IV4V01fnPA))

_“Come on, Haytham. Come on.” He is pushing, pulling, but Haytham’s body won’t move. There is blood, so much blood and he cannot see whether he’s still breathing and-_

_Haytham jerks, but when he turns it isn’t the steely gaze of the Templar Grand Master or the slightly softer glimmer of the man Shay has, in a way, grown to love; it’s empty and dark, eyes a pure black. His throat is an open wound, with sinews like teeth gaping through his skin. Haytham reaches out, his fingers contorted into claws._

_“It’s your fault,” he whispers, each word a gush of blood. “Your fault, Shay. You should’ve been here. You should never have left. Your fault.”_

_Shay wants to run, wants to fight, wants to kill the apparition in front of him, wants to leave and never come back. But he stands frozen to the ground as the corpse touches his skin, its nails digging into his flesh and he can feel his skin rip, can feel Haytham pulling him apart, he’s-_

_*_

Shay awoke with a shout. His heart was racing, cold sweat covering his face. He stared shivering into the darkness of the room, eyes fixating on the small strip of silver that the moonlight painted on the floor. He forced himself to feel every single inch of his body, from the tips of his trembling fingers to the roots of his hair, trying to slow down his breathing. It wasn’t by far the first time that he had awoken like this. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last time.

He reached out to touch the prone shape in bed next to him. Haytham’s skin was warm, but no longer burning; the worst of the fever had passed and, as the doctor put it, given enough time and care he was sure to recover. Shay rested his hand on Haytham’s shoulder for a moment longer than necessary, trying to etch the feeling into his memory, to let the closeness of life chase away the metallic taste of death in his mouth.

Normally, Haytham would have woken up, but as it was, he remained in the deep sleep of the exhausted and ill. He didn’t stir when Shay lay back down next to him, scooting closer until their backs were touching.

The next morning found him up early, going through the notes and papers on his desk as soon as it was light enough to see the cramped handwriting on the pages. Sleep wouldn’t have found him anyway. He could hear rustling behind him when the sun had risen high into the sky.

Despite all the sleep he had been getting recently (probably more in these past weeks than in the last few years combined), Haytham still looked exhausted, the ghostly pallor of almost-dying not quite gone from his cheeks.

“A strange thing, to see our roles so reversed,” he said. Shay couldn’t help a quiet a laugh – usually it was always Haytham who woke up early and began to work when Shay was still deeply asleep.

“ _Someone_ here has affairs to look after. We don’t all have the luxury of recovering in bed all day.” Shay’s voice was light, but even he could hear the palpable frustration in his voice, aggravated by the nightmares and lack of sleep. Haytham had always been perceptive; he only huffed in reply, leaning back against the pillows as he sat up.

“You didn’t sleep,” he remarked.

“No.” Shay rose from his seat and stretched, trying to fight the exhaustion that had settled so deeply in his bones that it felt like it would never leave.

“Nightmares?” Haytham asked.

Shay heaved a deep sigh and looked outside. For a moment, he longed to feel the Morrigan’s planks under his feet again, to taste the wind on the sea, but there was nothing that could have dragged him from Haytham’s side. Not when he was still so weak. Not when Connor was still out there.

“Yes.” The word fell unwillingly from Shay’s lips.

“Lisbon?” Haytham enquired delicately, already knowing the answer. Shay took a deep breath and turned away from the window again, looking squarely at Haytham.

“No,” he said. He hesitated before he forced himself to go on. Now that Haytham wasn’t in immediate danger of dying anymore, it was as good a time as any to have this argument. “Of you.”

Haytham was quiet for a moment. Illness and injury had always made him grumpy and surly, but this particular encounter with his son had left him in an even blacker and more pensive mood altogether.

“You don’t have to stay.” His voice was quiet, measured, but devoid of any emotion. Shay could feel his temper flare.

“But I do, don’t I?” he demanded. “Because if I don’t, there’s a good chance that I’ll find a corpse in place of the man I’ve sworn to protect.”

“The wound is healing well. I am not some child that needs minding.” Haytham’s brow creased, his voice stiff with formality. “And I can protect myself.”

“That’s just it, isn’t it.” Shay crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You can protect yourself. Until you can’t. Until a boy in an old castle in France runs you through, because forgiveness is yet too far from his heart. Until a group of Assassins catches you unawares, because you thought it better to ride out alone. Until your son hunts you down and you send me away to face the one foe you know can kill you.”

Anger darkened Haytham’s face at Shay’s words, his hand unconsciously reaching up to rub the bandage around his neck. It fell away before they could touch the clean linen.

“He would’ve killed you, too.”

“He must be a mighty fighter then, if he could take us both.” Shay made no effort to hide the bite in his words. He knew he was being petulant, but he couldn’t rein himself in, weeks of accumulated frustration and anger breaking through.

“I am sure that Achilles taught him well, in particular with regards to overcoming Templars.” Haytham’s voice was acidic, the implications in his words clear.

“It wasn’t your choice to make!” Shay yelled, his fist banging on the wood next to the window. “Dammit, Haytham. The least you could’ve done was to give us a chance, to figure out this mess together.”

“The chance to both fall to Assassin blades and let all our work here go to waste? I don’t think so.” Haytham’s eyes were hard, like two coins of chipped ice. “Forgive me if I’d rather not see you dead.”

“But _you_ dying is utterly acceptable?” The derision for his own life in Haytham’s voice stole Shay’s breath away. It was a feeling he knew only all too well; but to hear it echoed in someone else’s voice made it far more visceral.

“Yes. It is the Order that has to survive. Not me.”

“You say this as if you aren’t an integral part of the Order.” Shay stepped away from the window and walked towards the bed, until he was less than a yard away.

“There are others who could take my place,” Haytham insisted stubbornly. He didn’t look Shay in the eyes.

“Don’t you _dare_ , Haytham.” Shay’s voice was trembling with anger as he leaned forward, hands clenched around the frame of the bed. “Don’t you dare wash your hands clean like this and push all the responsibility for the Order on Charles and me. It’s not that easy, and you know it.”

The accusation that Lee was a less-than-ideal grandmaster hung unspoken in the air. Shay had never _really_ liked the man, especially when he had found out what he had done to Connor. If he was perfectly honest, he wouldn’t begrudge the boy Charles’ death, should he decide to kill him.

“And what, pray tell, would you have done in my stead? Run away and leave Charles to be slaughtered by my son?” Haytham’s oh-so-calm and measured tone was infuriating. They were going in circles.

“You could have sent a message! You could not have ordered me away in the first place!” Shay stepped away from the bed again and towards the wardrobe. It took him several tries to pull on his boots, his hands shaking with pent-up anger.

“It was the only way, Shay,” Haytham called after him from his place on the bed, eyes grey and unforgiving. “The only way to keep you safe.”

Shay grabbed his coat, belts and weapons without turning around.

“It was the way of a _coward_.”

The sound of the door slamming closed behind him echoed in the ensuing silence like a thunderclap.

*

There was no true poetry to be found in blood.

When Shay was young, he, like all the other youths his age, had always believed in the romantic notion that there was some sort of abstract beauty to be found in death, some sort of poetic grace in the way that people sometimes left this world. But if there was one thing that he had learned since he had first watched a Master Assassin fight as a young novice, it was that death was never beautiful. Oh, watching a skilled a fighter at work was always entrancing; but not so anything that they might leave behind.

Shay was breathing heavily as he surveyed the scene around him, the corpses strewn across the small courtyard. There was a fire still burning in one of the braziers to the side, where some of the gang members had warmed themselves before he had fallen upon them like a storm. They air stank of the remnants of his fight, almost making him gag. With a sigh, he began to clean up the scene – it wouldn’t do for the young couple, who had promised to return should the gang disappear, to find it such a mess.

It was mindless and physical work, the exact sort of task he needed right now. The anger inside him still hadn’t abated, although he had left Haytham behind two days ago. He felt restless, torn between wanting to return and hesitant to continue an argument that he could see no solution for.

At some point, however, there was no way to clean out the courtyard and adjacent house any further. Shay squared his shoulders with a sigh. If Monro was here now he’d have given him an earful already, talked about responsibility and not running away from his problems (oh, and Shay would know more than most about the latter, wouldn’t he).

He trudged back to Fort Arsenal where he had left Haytham in the care of his two most trusted servants. The sun had already set, and the house would most likely be mostly empty. He nodded at one of sailors as he entered; as Connor had decimated the Order in New York, they didn’t have enough men spare to keep a constant watch on the house. The men who had been sailing with Shay for the last decades were the only ones he trusted enough for the task.

Shay shrugged his coat off his shoulders and rid himself of most of his weapons, still filled to the brim with a strange feeling somewhere between excitement, anger, and dread. It made his stomach roil.

There was still light in Haytham’s room when he opened the door to step inside. Haytham was awake, although apparently in an even fouler mood than before. He was sitting upright in bed, a swath of documents spread out on his lap and his brow creased in thought.

“Haytham.” Shay closed the door behind him, stopping only a few steps into the room. He hadn’t felt this nervous in many years. It was almost ridiculous.

Haytham looked up, an indecipherable look travelling through his eyes.

“You’re hurt.” He nodded at Shay’s left arm.

Shay looked down at his sleeve where someone’s blade had cut clean through the leather and the skin beneath. He hadn’t even noticed the injury.

“Yes,” he said, rather stupidly. It was a deep enough wound to require stitches, but not deep enough to pose serious danger. Haytham’s gaze flickered to all the medical supplies strewn across his bedside table.

“Come here.” The words were just soft enough not to sound like an order. Shay hesitated for a moment, but finally relented. They sat in silence as Haytham cleaned and stitched the wound. Haytham’s movements, although careful, were still slow and clumsy, especially compared to his usual deftness. Shay made no mention of it, just closed his eyes and let the familiarity of the scene settle around his skin like an old and well-worn cloak.

Haytham wordlessly wrapped the wound in several layers of clean linen before moving away again. Shay shrugged on the fresh shirt he had been holding on his lap. It took all his strength to turn around on the edge of the bed and face Haytham.

“Guess you are not the only fool who runs off and gets himself hurt,” he finally said.

“I guess not.” A hint of Haytham’s usual acerbity laced the words. “Although I assume it was for a worthwhile cause, and not the simple act of seeking death due to one of your black moods.”

“A gang settled at one of the inns north of here, forcefully taking it from its previous ownesr and leaving them penniless on the street in the process.”

“I assume said gang is no more.” Haytham rolled his shoulder’s slightly, wincing when the movement aggravated the wound at his throat. “Did you find out if they were acting on their own accord or working for someone?”

Shay reached for one of the pouches he had brought into the room with him and handed Haytham two pieces of paper from inside.

“I don’t know who it was, but I don’t think their acts were as isolated as one might think.”

“Normally I would suspect the Assassins, but I do not believe my son would endorse such acts either.” Haytham frowned. “A third party we do not know about? Someone who thinks they can use the current chaos between Assassins and Templars to their advantage? Or someone else entirely with no knowledge of either?”

“Hard to say, sir.” Shay shrugged. “There is no mention of Brotherhood or Order in the letters.”

“Perhaps something to look into in further detail,” Haytham suggested. Neither of them voiced the suggestion so clearly written in the air – that the perpetrator(s) could be found much more easily if they just cooperated with the Assassins.

“Certainly.” Shay shifted slightly. “I will make some inquiries tomorrow. Perhaps some of my old contacts are still alive.”

“Very well.” Haytham heaved a sigh and pushed the papers on his lap aside. “I believe that the vast majority of my old network has been obliterated by my son’s…eagerness, but there might be one or two people in this city who might yet be receptive to your enquiries if they come with a letter signed by me.”

“Good.” Shay began to rise from his space on the bed when Haytham reached out, the tips of his fingers just ever so slightly brushing over the back of Shay’s hand.

“I-“ Haytham closed his mouth and frowned. He shifted, grimacing, before he spoke again. Shay let him stew in his discomfort, harbouring no intent of making it any easier for him.

“I would appreciate word of what you are doing, the next time you disappear for several days,” Haytham finally said.

“You never used to mind.” Shay frowned. “I am quite capable of making my own decisions, you know. No supervision needed.”

“That’s not-“ Haytham heaved a frustrated sigh. Issuing apologies had never been his strongest suit. “I did not mean to demean your capabilities.” His voice was stiff. “It would…help me focus my strength fully on my recovery if I knew about your planned activities.”

“You were worried.” At last, Shay took at least a modicum of pity on him. Haytham sighed again.

“Yes,” he admitted unwillingly.

“Good.” Shay scrunched up his nose slightly. “Now increase the strength of this worry and feeling of someone not trusting you tenfold and perhaps you understand my words better.”

Haytham closed his eyes, stretching his neck slightly, careful to avoid the stitches at the side of his throat.

“Point taken,” he finally said. Shay knew that this was as close to an apology as he was likely going get. Haytham would go to his grave believing that his decision had been the right – they were both so alike in this respect that the irony was almost painful.

At last he relaxed, leaning into Haytham’s touch ever so slightly.

“I am glad you’re still alive.” The words were careful, measured, carrying so much more with them than just the one sentiment.

“For what it is worth, I am glad I am still able to enjoy your presence.” Another olive branch extended Shay’s way. If the situation weren’t so serious, he would have marvelled at it.

“You’ll need to do an awful lot more healing if you truly want to _enjoy_ me again, sir,” he said. Haytham looked at him for an uncomfortably long moment before he rolled his eyes and leaned back. Shay bit his lip to keep from laughing.

“It seems that no amount of time will ever improve upon your sense of humour,” Haytham sighed.

“Indeed, I am a lost cause.” Shay nodded theatrically, trying to keep his expression serious.

“A pity.” The tiniest of smiles tugged at Haytham’s lips as the earlier tension slowly bled out of his body. His face was almost grey with exhaustion, reminding Shay once more with painful clarity just how close he had come to death and how far he was from a full recovery, if he would ever completely recover. They both knew that the argument between them was far from over, but it no longer seemed an insurmountable barrier. Shay knew he would never fully forgive Haytham for what he had done, but at least they could both learn to live with it.

“In this case, perhaps I should look for a new confidante,” Haytham continued.

“Someone else who is willing to put up with your ridiculous habits, to share your bed _and_ give you an earful when he thinks you need it? With all due respect, _sir_ , I doubt you’d have much luck.” Shay leaned back against the bed’s headrest beside Hayham.

“Mhmmm.” Haytham hummed in quiet appreciation when Shay’s shoulder touched his. “Insolence is another one of your qualities that has hardly improved over time, it appears.”

“Alas.” Shay’s fingers rested on Haytham’s arm before he carefully leaned into his side. “Seems like you’ll just have to put with it.”

Haytham shifted his body so that Shay’s weight wouldn’t jostle any of his wounds. His eyes stared into the distance before he looked over at Shay, the weight of his emotions flashing inside them for just a moment.

“It seems I do.” He sighed, the echo of a smile travelling over his face as his fingers reached for Shay’s. “There are far worse fates, I am sure.”


End file.
